Japan's News Groups Rename Bureaus
In Beijing to Get Press Access to Taipei

By

Masayoshi Kanabayashi Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

Updated Jan. 21, 1999 12:27 a.m. ET

S EVERAL BIG Japanese news organizations have long wanted bureaus in the Taiwanese capital of Taipei, but couldn't open one for fear of angering China. Now they've found a solution: Simply change the name of their Beijing bureaus.

For nearly three decades, the Sankei Shimbun daily newspaper has been the only big Japanese news organization with a bureau in Taiwan. Sankei, the most conservative of Japan's enormous dailies, was kicked out of Beijing in the 1960s for criticizing the Cultural Revolution. Most of the other...